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3scale API Management vs Perforce Acana comparison

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Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 22, 2026

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

3scale API Management
Ranking in API Management
28th
Average Rating
7.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
12
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
Perforce Acana
Ranking in API Management
35th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2026, in the API Management category, the mindshare of 3scale API Management is 1.8%, down from 2.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Perforce Acana is 1.2%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
API Management Mindshare Distribution
ProductMindshare (%)
3scale API Management1.8%
Perforce Acana1.2%
Other97.0%
API Management
 

Featured Reviews

reviewer2747757 - PeerSpot reviewer
Program Manager at a insurance company with 1,001-5,000 employees
Facilitates API exposure securely and highlights developer portal flexibility needs
Not much stands out for me regarding the advantages of this product. We usually don't tinker with it. Developing developer portals could be more standards-based. I think currently it's Ruby-based. Having more options on designing that would be beneficial. Additional flexibility would have been great; we would have used it more if it aligned with our platform. I don't use the analytics part. We don't use monetization features, which help to create a revenue generation model.
Saurav Krishna - PeerSpot reviewer
Data Engineering and AI Intern at .3Lines Venture Capital
Authentication mechanism is easy to implement but improvement is needed in documentation
For API security purposes, we use the tool to host all our APIs. This allows us to take advantage of the security features provided by the platform. With the solution, we can implement rules such as rate limiting and restricting the number of API calls for each user. It acts as a secure gateway…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"One of the most valuable aspects of this solution for us is its ease of deployment."
"3scale: what a really good product to secure an unsecure API if you have multiple backend unsecured routes provided by an ESB (Red Hat Fuse), and available through one unique frontend acting as a secure gateway (with HTTPS protocol and API keys)."
"3scale API Managment provides a platform facilitating Trusted Service Providers communicating with the service provider securely and efficiently, greatly enhancing direct business transactions and application to application communications."
"It simplifies exposing our APIs externally and inherently adds a layer of security, which I see as a positive impact from the product."
"3scale API Management is a containerized product, so all its parts are deployed into containers, and standard deployment is very simple because it goes on the OpenShift."
"The most valuable features are the gateway and security features."
"The solution is quite lightweight, and the installation is very easy. It's like a two-click installation."
"3scale API Management's best feature is API management."
"It allowed us to publish and replace pre-essential transactions in one place, with a uniformity in terms of control and policies."
"Good interface, intuitive solution."
"The tool's authentication mechanism is easy to implement. We had to define a few parameters."
"The interface is good, and the policies that it uses as opposed to the features that it has in terms of security and the throughput management and those aspects are intuitive."
"Its completeness feature for the large enterprises, in my case for the government, is the most valuable feature of this product."
 

Cons

"The initial setup is complex and takes four months to complete."
"What I'd like to improve in 3scale API Management is its route-limiting feature. Currently, I don't know how to do that effectively on the solution, but in Kong, I know how to do it, so I would love to see route-limiting being easily done on 3scale API Management. It would also be good if there was some authentication that you could do from 3scale API Management because Kong offers that functionality out of the box. What I'd love to see in the next release of 3scale API Management is the ability to integrate more plug-ins easily onto the platform, so you'll be able to extend it, and even do customs management. If Red Hat could offer that extension where it allows the internal organization where 3scale API Management is deployed on-premise to integrate its tools on top of 3scale API Management and provide an API for that, that will make the solution very powerful."
"We have had performance issues before with 3scale API Management, but we came to certain resolutions, and we are looking to improve or increase our throughput in the near future."
"What was suggested by Red Hat was a crucial part of the configuration, but when we started to ask about the supportability of this configuration, Red Hat said only some parts of the configuration would be supported."
"It would be helpful to improve the customization features so that the customer can do it based on their own needs."
"The product is not that flexible for developers. It's less flexible and rigid. It's not easy to make changes or customize it."
"As much as we tried to implement 3scale API Management the incompatibility of the version did not allow us to proceed."
"I believe the CMS part of it has room for improvement though. That is where you write a couple of things if you want to publish your API. It's based on liquid scripting, which doesn't seem like the obvious ones to script with."
"Lacks an integrated billing feature."
"We actually did reach out to the technical support and it was all right, not great. We didn't get the answers we needed."
"The product has new features that we are going to implement in the next few months, such as API management and analytic reporting."
"The version that we have is very old."
"Akana API Management needs to improve its documentation."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The cost was around $45,000 per year."
"The pricing is affordable, it's cheap."
"3scale API Management has reasonable pricing, judging from its competitor, Kong. My organization pays yearly for the 3scale API Management license, though I'm unable to give the exact figure because every single day there are new clusters deployed. I'm in charge of three to four clusters in my team, but give or take, it costs a few thousand lakhs."
"I don't think that 3scale is very expensive."
"For us, the pricing and licensing policies were for an on-premise installation with a fixed cost structure, that matched our budgeting policies."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
14%
Government
11%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Insurance Company
6%
Outsourcing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Healthcare Company
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business6
Midsize Enterprise2
Large Enterprise5
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

What needs improvement with 3scale API Management?
Not much stands out for me regarding the advantages of this product. We usually don't tinker with it. Developing developer portals could be more standards-based. I think currently it's Ruby-based. ...
What is your primary use case for 3scale API Management?
Our company exposes different APIs, and we use it to monitor traffic, limit traffic, and similar functions. I don't have much involvement with the solution, though I did conduct some research. We s...
What advice do you have for others considering 3scale API Management?
In my work, I am using both Azure API Management and 3scale API Management. We're on the Red Hat platform, so this product aligns naturally. I would rate 3scale API Management a six out of ten.
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Overview

 

Sample Customers

Victor Ops, Coca Cola, The Telegraph, Skava, Orange, Typeform
British American Tobacco, Credit Suisse, Daimler, eBay, FOX, Liberty Mutual, Marriott, Mayo Clinic, Skandia, Tata communications
Find out what your peers are saying about 3scale API Management vs. Perforce Acana and other solutions. Updated: November 2026.
920,939 professionals have used our research since 2012.